Perfection and pain
by Jensu
Summary: Ken relfects on the last decade of his life when he's twenty. Friendship fic with Daisuke


Digimon aren't mine.  
  
  
  
I hurt my best friend.   
  
I'm this truly wonderful human being who can do nothing wrong. I excel at everything. I am perfect. There is nothing that I can't do, and do well. That is simply a fact.  
  
I hurt him without a word.  
  
I am the star of the soccer team, the basketball team. I am a track star, and the most enduring runner of cross country. If I decide that it's worthy of me, then I will practice a sport. It never takes long for me to learn to outdue my teammates. But I never rub it in. Everyone knows that I'm perfect at everything. It's who I am  
  
I hurt him deeply, thoughtlessly.  
  
I can play any instrument. Piano, flute, saxophone, clarinet, french horn, trombone, trumpet, drums, violin, cello. The list goes on and on. I can play them all well and flawlessly. It's easy.  
  
I hurt him, and ignored his pain.  
  
I am popular. There isn't one person in school who doesn't want to be my friend. I can speak any language, pass any subject. I don't even have to study like others. I don't study at all. I just know it. Everyone wants my help. They all want to be seen with the child genius, the prodigy. Who wouldn't?  
  
I hurt him, and I can't apologize.  
  
In all that I do, I make it seem effortless. As if there were no work involved. I am the envy of every person that I know. Including my parents. I am the perfect role model.  
  
I hurt him, killed part of him.  
  
There is nothing that I can't do. Except remember what it was like to really care about anything. It's all fake. It's an act I can't escape. I managed to hide in the digital world. Then they...he brought me back. It worked for a while. I could remember humanity.  
  
I hurt him, and it's killing me.  
  
But, when you're support system starts to get pushed away, what is there to hold you up. How can you stand alone, when you haven't got the energy to get on your feet? I was slipping back into that hole, the one I fell into shortly before the Kaiser emerged.  
  
I hurt him, and I feel his pain.  
  
I rejected him at first. I didn't want them around. They had defeated me, he had defeated me. But there I was, back in the Digital world, trying to save the very digimon that I had worked to enslave.   
  
I hurt him, and he forgave me.  
  
I stood beside them, helped them, fought beside them. On the outside, I was beginning to become human. But I was slipping on the inside. I was lost, with no-one looking in the right direction to save me.  
  
I hurt him, and he hurt me in return.  
  
But he caught me in time. I don't know how. He's not that observant. He's supposed to be flaky and unreliable. He appears to be dense and slow. Yet, it was he who caught me, bore me up, and slapped me. He woke me up from the nightmare I was living.  
  
I hurt him, and he thanked me.  
  
I returned to the Kaiser's arrogance, staring him down. I mocked him and hit him. I threatened him and beat him. And he only touched me the once. A single slap when I started to cry. He let me vent my anger and frustration out on him, until he was bruised and bleeding. And he never hit me back. Just that one, single slap pulling me from my self-pity.  
  
I hurt him, and he smiled.  
  
My frustration gone, I yelled. I called him more names than I ever thought existed. I made them up and flung them at him in anger and pain. He didn't say anything. He just sat there with a smiling, bloody mouth and waited while I raged and raged at him.   
  
I hurt him, and he cried.  
  
When the anger ran out, I was left with the despair. I poured out the emptiness, the fakeness of my life. I didn't shed a single tear as I spoke of the lost lonely boy I had been, and still was. Of parent's who were in love with a dead ideal. A brother who had left too much of a burden. Of the expectations that didn't fit me, that I filled anyway. And throught dry eyes, I saw his tears.  
  
I hurt him, and he loved me anyway.   
  
As I trailed off into silence, he waited. He wasn't a patient person. He was energetic and impulsive, spontaneous and reckless. And yet he waited. For me. For me to reflect on all that I had told him, because we both knew that he didn't understand anything but the pain. He waited for me to stop, and then he hugged me.  
  
I hurt him, and I healed him.  
  
I wept against his shoulder. Not tears of self-pity, but tears of anger and frustration, and sorrow at the pain that I had caused him. I turned twenty that day. For nine years, I bottled up all of my feelings, refusing to let them out. I let parts of me die, not realizing that I killed him when I did it. I hurt us both, by trying to be too strong. I shut him out, forced him out of my life.   
  
I hurt my best friend. And he healed me.   
  
He took me from the broken shell that I was, and made me what I am today. A whole person, who can look at life without bitterness or regrets. He showed me all that the world had to offer.   
  
I hurt my best friend, and he made me whole.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Does this depress anyone else? I love Ken. He's the original kicked puppy. You just want to hold him and take away all his pain. That's something that only true friends can do.  
  
J. S. Norris, author 


End file.
